When the going gets tough, the tough create

As it’s one, often times your only option, such as if you have nothing, you don’t have much of choice but to make or create something from it and two, usually your best creations come not from a place of convenience and security, but from a place on the edge, where there’s risk all around and you’re testing relatively unknown directions no matter what you do.

Here are ten examples where this seems to ring true:

1. Jokes: They say tragedy is the source of all comedy, another unfortunate irony of life and if true, any difficult time or situation you’re involved with is in reality a ripe, bursting, overflowing, ground for comedy of all sorts, just waiting to be plucked.

2. Writing: A ranking in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club labeled the book Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes as the “best literary work ever written” on top of a list of the 100 best books of all time. Truth be told, Don Quixote was finished while Cervantes was spending time in prison.

3. Painting: Ever hear of Van Gogh? Did a lifetime of work in a decade, all of which from a place with little to zero conveniences, he shunned them and constantly gave away what little he had.

4. Technology: Tesla did most of his work alone in a barn, Apple came from a garage, Archimedes took a bath. While having resources up the wazoo can be helpful for derivatives, breaking through to something new often ends up having more basic foundations.

5. Cooking: Don’t have exactly the right ingredients for this or that dish, you try substituting something different and presto, the unique combination of that new ingredient you added does wonders with combined and cooked with others.

6. Medicines: There’s this little known drug called Penicillin, discovered on accident from a Petri dish left open and “contaminated” to form the start of what later would be proven to be a miraculous discovery. Another example of big things having small beginnings.

7. Traveling: Ever have a perfectly planned (and probably boring) trip get turned on its head by something unexpected and in the process, you discover or have an experience that overshadows all of your plans? This could planning to visit a by flight, it gets delayed too long and you end up being a bit creative or adventurous and renting a car or taking a train instead. In the process you see or experience things you never expected, overcame some new struggle and it will probably end up being the most memorable part of the trip.

8. Fishing: Whether in a river, lake or ocean, you usually don’t catch too much, or nothing more than below average, when doing what everyone is doing. So, you try something different, a new spot, a new presentation or a combination, while you may fail, fail and fail again, sooner or later you find the fish and usually the only way these new “hotspots” are discovered.

9. Getting lost: Ever see the movie The Edge with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin? If so, you’ll remember the often repeated line of “Why do people die in the woods? They die of shame. They sit there and they… die. Because they didn’t do the one thing that could have saved their lives, thinking.” Thinking, creating, similar words from the same arena.

10. Performing: For people that regularly perform on a stage in front of others, no doubt there are times where you screw up, but the thing is, most of the time unless you really go out of your way to expose it, the only person really knows you screwed up is you. So if you’re quick thinking, you can come up with a creative way to pass it over as something you intended to do or just moving on as if nothing happened, and likewise to them nothing did, you performed exactly as you’d planned. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

Have your own network to help organize your new creations

Keep to yourself or share with others as appropriate, here are a few benefits you get from doing so with your own networks:

Get started and invite others for free with Basic plan, individuals can later upgrade to Premium if appropriate for extra features and storage options.

Create as many networks as appropriate for your activities and the groups you’re involved with, keep content focused for each.

Add content to useful applications, such as other websites or blogs for reference, actions for a new project, notes to brainstorm new ideas and others as appropriate for your activities.

If sharing the networks with others, you can add a newsletter to automatically get informed of new content or comments by email, or when logged in you can check your Updates stream to see new content from any networks you’re connected with.

Take a tour to learn more, including getting started, creating your networks, using the applications and more.

Published by

Matt

Founder and CEO of Odysen, involved with different writing and music freelancing activities, and have previously worked for larger technology businesses in the US, Europe and Asia.
View all posts by Matt